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Gene's favorite place in the world was SHADOWLAND, Brother Shadow's newsgroup for bizarre magicians (Shadow Network/Digest). Gene was bizarre, loved bizarre, and was most comfortable with bizarre. He responded to just about every posting, praising the poster, offering further ideas, and encouraging others to do the same. His wacky sense of humor shone and he soon made dozens, many dozens, of new friends and admirers which he cherished. These people gave Gene a great gift without knowing it. They lifted him out of his shell, out of his dismal apartment, out of his near depression, and into a world filed with real people that admired him and actually communicated with him... daily! There were times, honestly, when I would cry a tear of joy for what the Shadowlanders and the EGers did for Gene's spirit. And the best part is they did if from admiration and appreciation, not as an act of kindness because they never knew the real, sad, man behind the funny and smart words.

I felt the way a mother must feel who brings a baby into the world. I feel I helped bring Gene back into the world of magic. I watched him grow and mature in cyberspace. When he "met" Mary Tomich and she published his THE PRACTITIONER: JOURNEYS INTO GREY book I felt true joy. Without the internet the two would have never met. Mary, like me, felt Gene Poinc was long deceased. But, finding him alive and eager, she gave him a new reason to write and the result is a book (hopefully a series, for Mary has two more manuscripts) has already become a "classic" of bizarre magick.

Along the line Phil Wilmarth, Editor of the Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, ran into the "new" Poinc and invited him to write a column for this magazine. True to his nature, Gene accepted, and quickly sent Phil enough columns to go on for several years after his death. He did not want to be forgotten again. One of his columns has run it's course, "The Magic of Writing Magic." But a second one, "Out of My Mind" (appropriate!) has begun and still others are on hold. Oh, and it is perhaps not well known but Gene's One Man Parade for the Linking Ring won a "Best of the Year" trophy (Linking Ring Vol. 82, Number 2, February 2002). Only one is awarded each year and Gene was extremely proud of winning it. Sadly, though, he was never to see it.

Though robust and healthy in his young years his health failed him quite rapidly as he aged. When I met him his vision was becoming a problem. The retinas in his eyes would bleed and cause his vision to blur. Laser surgery helped correct the problem but never solved it. Eventually Gene was unable to draw and his beloved art ability was unusable. Few of his internet friends knew that Gene would have to enlarge the print of his screen to at least 36 point, and then read it with his nose just a few inches away. His witty responses were done the same way... first written seeing only the words in his mind as his fingers typed, then enlarging the letters and editing what he wrote. A laborious task but one he did because he WANTED to communicate with his friends.